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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

This is why I see capitalism eventually failing. On one hand, I think it's great that these mind-numbingly boring jobs can be automated away. On the other hand, the end result is that more profits go to Amazon, while many more people have fewer opportunities to participate in the economy. For the old predictable arguments of "Well, these people can do something else, do you expect buggy whip makers to still be around?" - at some point if the rate of automation is faster than people are able to retrain, and faster than the economy is able to create new opportunities for these people, the outcome is still the same: all the benefits of capitalism go to very few people while huge swaths of people are made "redundant".

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The response to this is usually, "Well, then people should be retrained." It's kind of an elitist, SV bubble trope at this point.

There are millions of people who simply cannot be retrained.

Yes, pick-and-pack is mind-numbingly boring for many people. But for others, it's good. Or even challenging.

I've worked on an assembly line three times in my life. I found it tedious and pointless, and to keep my mind busy, I mostly just focused on what I was going to do after work. But there were people there for whom the work was a perfect fit.

Not everyone has the intellectual capacity of a SV keyboard jockey. Not everyone has average motor skills. These people still need jobs. Still need to earn money. Still have the right to participate in society.

The solution is not to just throw UBI money at them and warehouse them in apartments like cattle. The solution is to automate an appropriate amount of factory jobs, but also keep an appropriate amount of low-skill jobs so that these people can be part of society.

I think we'll see more low/mid scaled jobs. Capitalism is about continually innovating. The problems of course, are the finite set of resources, and the fact that you can't have infinite growth.

We need to businesses around reuse and recycling. We need a ton of people who can find new ways to disassemble and dismal complicated parts, quickly, so they can be turned into new resources; so we're not shipping all our e-waste to kids in Africa who get heavy metal poisoning for a little bit of copper or lead.

There are lots of things that still need innovation. You throw UBI and people, and you won't get that.

UBI would work if we didn't have resource scarcity. We do not have Star Trek style replicators. We are far from being scarcity free.

> It's kind of an elitist, SV bubble trope at this point.

I agree with the "elitist" part but not the "SV" part. "Well, they'll just get retraining" has been the orthodox economist's standard dismissal of any and all concerns related to automation and/or globalization for decades, long before Silicon Valley became economically or culturally influential. In fact, SV is more likely to support UBI, which is still a handwavy way-too-hopeful solution, but it's a step in the right direction.

> These people still need jobs.

I think this is a statement worth teasing apart a bit.

Nobody "needs" a job, for most definitions of "job."

Everyone needs

food

water

shelter.

Maslow's hierarchy makes this clear.

In most places in the world, you justify your right to access food, water, and shelter by providing labor to earn capital (or you just have capital because your parents had capital) to give to someone else for the food, water, and shelter they control. Sometimes this is the person that gave you the capital in the first place! (What if you work for Safeway? ...or whole foods? )

So you're not technically incorrect to say "these people need jobs." Of course they need jobs, if they don't, they'll starve to death or die of exposure! But it doesn't sit right with me. Why is the solution automatically "let's find a way for them to justify their existence in a world quickly filling up with robots," and not simply "let's sit back and enjoy the fruits of robotic labor?"

> just throw UBI money at them and warehouse them in apartments like cattle

I think this is how the bottom portion of Maslow's hierarchy is often dismissed.

What I think the parent is talking about is higher up in the hierarchy--esteem needs. In our current society, most people get fulfillment through their job or raising kids. You often hear about issues with empty nest or retirement because people have trouble losing that purpose in their life.

I've heard a lot of people bring up this dilemma, but not a lot of discussion about solutions. Often, they seem to imply work is the only way for fullfilment and don't even mention raising kids.

I think history has a bunch of examples. None are going to be a good fit for everyone and I can imagine many people just being warehoused, consuming media with no other purpose. Historically, you saw well-to-do women run charities outside of raising children. A lot of scientists were very well to do people following their whims. For retirees, they can find purpose in maintaining a garden, playing music, or something else that offers personal fulfillment.

That's quite the strawman of the argument. I mean, why bring up UBI? Communists also talk about the issues of capitalism, and it'd be kinda funny to hear them try to integrate "income" into their curtencyless philosophy.

> think history has a bunch of examples.

Which part of history has automation and post scarcity? This would be news to me!

> consuming media with no other purpose.

Far be it for me to judge what people do with their time. I hate running but there's these maniacs that run marathons.

> That's quite the strawman of the argument.

I wasn't trying to make an argument or refute anything you said. I liked that you brought up Maslow and was hoping to steer the conversation back to what the parent was saying.

The UBI quote came directly from the parent post. UBI comes up a lot with liberals in the US as a response--often it's dismissed because (assuming it works) it only solves the base of the pyramid. (I honestly have never heard post-scarcity or automating away jobs brought up by conservatives in the US)

> Which part of history has automation and post scarcity?

Apologies, I felt like I was pretty clear when I was referring to portions of society and not society as a whole. Women only recently became part of the traditional workforce. Women would often marry and bare children rather young and affluent would send kids to boarding school. This gave them a lot of time outside of child rearing. A lot of history's scientists were independently wealthy.

> Far be it for me to judge what people do with their time.

I'm not intending to put words in the parent poster's mouth, but the implication of warehousing and forgetting low-skilled people I politely put as "consuming media with no other purpose." The fear is more like high suicide rates, high levels of depression, and addiction. You're certainly allowed to not judge--I'm not sure "judge" would be the word I'd use for how I would feel about those people, but the common discussion when this gets brought up is if and what could be done to address it, because UBI (assuming it was a workable solution) wouldn't.

> The solution is not to just throw UBI money at them and warehouse them in apartments like cattle

What would be wrong with targeted career replacement income? Instead of throwing a little money at everybody, completely fund the remainder of careers at the functionally obsolete/long-term disabled/otherwise unhirable. Then create incentives to hire these individuals that outpace offshoring/outsourcing/automation.

Either they get a good job that replaces what they lost, or enjoy getting what their career promised - including sizable wage increases.

> The solution is to automate an appropriate amount of factory jobs, but also keep an appropriate amount of low-skill jobs so that these people can be part of society.

Yeah but, isn't the fact that those are going away the whole problem? If there already was an "appropriate amount of low-skill jobs" we wouldn't be talking about this. Do you want the government to mandate certain companies have to keep X number of certain jobs around for low-skilled workers? And what do you do about jobs that simply aren't needed anymore (not automated away, just gone due to something new)?

I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, but it seems odd to me that you're complaining about UBI but your solution to the problem is likely just UBI with extra steps - is it more 'demeaning' to just give people money for nothing, or to force them to do a literally unnecessary job to get it?

It's also not like there isn't anything for people to do if they're receiving UBI in place of their (now gone) job, Ex. they could volunteer at a non-profit, work on hobbies, work for a local business (that maybe couldn't afford to hire them at a full salary), etc. And all those things are arguably more useful usages of their time than making them do an unnecessary job.

Still, fundamentally I agree with most of your criticisms, there's definitely a subset of the population that really can't be retrained from what they currently do, but recognizing the problem and solving the problem are two different things. And numbers here matter as well - the number of people losing their jobs to automation is a different number from those that can't reasonably be expected to be retrained somewhere else. If that second group is small enough, just giving them UBI/SS/etc. and telling them to retire is honestly not that bad of an option.

That’s why we have a government, to adapt society to an ever changing world. You can postulate as to _if_ government will step in an enact the requisite policies (UBI, Retraining, ect) but it doesn’t take a big imagination to see a world post-automation. There’s even a whole TV series set in such a world: Star Trek.

Sure would be cool if we could skip the whole dystopian bit, and the WWIII part, and the genetically engineered people rebellion.

The nature of government is reactive, not pro-active. Except when they are stepping forward to propose a solution that won't work for a problem that doesn't exist for virtue/positioning points.

Star Trek is a great fantasy, but we are a long ways away from that. (Culturally, politically, legally, technologically and economically)

> The nature of government is reactive, not pro-active.

What a nonsensical thing to say. There are so many counterexamples, where to even begin?

Don't confuse your current administration or administrative culture for 'government' worldwide, throughout history.

>all the benefits of capitalism go to very few people while huge swaths of people are made "redundant".

While that's true, it's only true from a short to medium-term perspective.

In the US at least (perhaps some folks from elsewhere can chime in on this), nearly 70% of GDP is consumer spending.

As you automate away jobs, that leaves fewer people with money to spend. The very wealthy, while certainly able to consume vastly more than others, can't make up for this.

Mostly because there's a limit on how many pairs of pants, skirts, socks, sofas, T-bone steaks, homes, cars, half-caf soy lattes, etc., etc., etc. that one person or household can reasonably use.

If current trends continue, eventually there won't be enough demand to satisfy the levels of production over the long-term -- which will cause the economy to crash and burn.

As such, creating incentives to raise wages, employ more people and encouraging real investment by the wealthiest, rather than incentivizing the hoarding of financial resources, could ensure a vibrant economy for the long-term -- with benefits to everyone, including the very wealthy.

Yes, it will mean that someone whose net worth could be hundreds of millions may only be tens of millions, but from the standpoint of living a good life, how would that make a material difference?

Please note that I am emphatically not advocating for "forced wealth redistribution" or "nationalization of private industry."

Rather, I'm suggesting that changing the incentives WRT wages, taxes and jobs in a capitalist system could have a profound positive effect in the near, medium and long-term on those with the least, and a profound positive effect on those with the most in the long-term.

In fact, creating incentives to inject more consumer spending (through higher wages, incentives to innovate and engage in entrepreneurial activities, disincentives to using arbitrage and financial chicanery to increase wealth, etc.) is a market-based way to bolster the strength of the economy for the long-term, increase the consumer power of those with the least and ensure the long-term growth and stability of our economy and society.

Let's do capitalism right and create a better world for all of us.

I don't see how any of that leads to the failure of capitalism: it is, and will continue to succeed at explicitly everything it set out to accomplish.

Does capitalism (as opposed to capitalists) have goals?

Is that a failure of capitalism or of our education systems or simply an oversupply of humans?

An oversupply of humans?

Well, we do replicate. Maybe not as much as rabbits.

And, recently, we die less in childbirth and infant-hood. So - even with falling childbirth rates, we still tend to multiply a bit.

But given that absolute and relative global poverty rates and starvation rates and disease mortality rates have plummeted and population grows dramatically - it becomes a resource allocation problem.

Germany (for example) needs more laborers because of plummeting domestic birth rates. The retired community's social net requires young tax-payers to pick up the burden. Demographics are screwing with this math. Somalia or Syria (for example) have a lot of folks that need to escape. Problem: Once Turks or Arabs or Persians or Somalians or Syrians or Northern Africans get to Germany - they may or may not want to learn the language - but as refugees, they get full public benefit. And are not willing to learn or work to support retired Germans (this is an isolated example).

Maybe we have an exploding population in all the wrong places? (I am not recommending genocide - just: It is a wicked problem)

well given that Capitalism also increasingly optimises the education sector in the way it optimises conveyor belts it arguably is.

In all of these discussions about automation, Capitalism, economic dynamics and so on a lot of people seem to try to argue that the process can be divided into the automation part, call it capitalism with a small c, and the education/political/human part, when in reality, technological process changes both in the exact same way.

I mean even the term you went with "oversupply of humans", from which vantage point does such a label come? Sounds more like a rogue AI than a humanistic consideration. That would be Capitalism with a capital C speaking, I guess.

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